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Friday, September 30, 2016

After a couple of weeks of waiting for things to dry and aging effects, I present to you Nevermore Books. I'm ridiculously pleased with how it came out. I love the colours and I love the aging. I love all the books and I love the brick and stone and I really hope you do, too.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Hi everyone! Barbara here today on the Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts blog with a couple of retro style cards for you. These cards can be used for any occasion, especially if the recipient is into vintage or retro styles.

Milk Can Card:

This is what the chipboard looks like. I left the bits from the detail cuts in the milk can.

Paint milk can with black gesso and sprinkle salt over it while still wet. Let dry.

Rub salt off of milk can and paint a light coat of Vivid True Silver, allowing some of the black to show through. The salt left a cool texture on the can.

Use a silvery dimensional paint (steel) and make 3D lines where the detail cuts were made in the can. Set aside to dry.

Adhere red print paper to card front. Glue retro circles to card front, and use punch out piece of unfinished chipboard from inside one of the retro circles, adhere to card, as shown. This will help give a level area for adhering the TV in a later step.

Adhere retro TV to card front, as shown. This is why that extra piece of chipboard was necessary, to help stabilize the TV when adhered to the front. Add stickers "ridiculously good" to front, as shown in finished photo above.

I hope you enjoyed my retro card projects today. Check your stash and see what fun things you can find to use with any of the fabulous Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts. You may surprise yourself at how easy it is to make some really creative cards that everyone will be talking about.

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Hello everyone! Lora here with my last project for Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts as
a guest designer. It has been a boat load of fun and I want to thank Gina for
letting me play!

This weeks piece is all about the very cool Victorian Frame and Easel that I've transformed into a
Halloween-ish Day of the Dead frame. I love all the bright colors on the skulls
made of sugar and a hundred other medium nowadays to celebrate the holiday and
I wanted to paint my version of them on the frame.
It really lends itself to this style of painting with all it's pierced
swirls and curlicues.

This project is really straight forward....just the frame and some paint. I
mostly used Ceramcoat Matte Acrylic Paints. The first thing was to prime everything in a coat of gesso, and then I
painted the back piece of the frame orange.

Everything else got a good coat of black and I gave it a lot of time to dry
completely. Like about fifteen minutes, because that's a long time for me.
Maybe in dog years it's about an hour and a half.

After that, it was mostly painting around the edges of the pierce work,
emphasizing the shapes. I used mostly bright shades of green and purple with a
little red and accents of white to make things pop.

This guy was hanging around on my work table and wanted to get into the
pictures....

For the easel that the frame is resting on I drew (in pencil) the repeated
flower design that is in the center of each side of the frame and painted it
green to match the frame. I added some dots and a couple of curlicues that help
tie both pieces together.

I really like that you can turn the frame long-ways to fit a different shape
picture. I plan on using this frame to show off my business card at my market
table this Halloween.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Hello, it is Gloria with you and it is my turn again on the blog! I had a blast making this Mad Hatter Tea Chest using the GSLCuts Treasure Chest (check availability at the Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts Store).

The chest is 2 1/2" x 5 1/4" x 3 1/4" the way I have it assembled. It is perfect place to store some tea or coffee packets. (Or candy, for you non-tea drinkers!)

Let's get started making this project!

1. Remove the Treasure Chest pieces from the packaging and give them a good wipe with a damp cloth. (The laser cutting process generates a lot of soot!)

2. Spray the bottom of the chest, the lid "frame," and the thin pieces with black glitter mist. Allow to dry.

3. Cover the inside of the chest pieces with decorative paper. Use a gel medium (or similar product) to attach the paper to the chipboard. Sponge the edges with black ink.

4. Assemble the chest. Attach paper to the outside surfaces of the chest. Coat the outside surface of the box with gel medium to seal it. (You can see here that my gel is still wet. It will dry clear.) Spray the other side of the "frame" piece with black glitter mist and allow it to dry.

5. Glue the frame to the top of the box. (This is not how the box is to be assembled, but I decided that this is how I wanted it.) Cover both sides of the largest chipboard rectangle with paper. Glue the chest to the center of the piece.

6. Glue the thin pieces of chipboard around the top and bottom of the chest as shown. Trim thin pieces of decorative paper and sponge the edges with black ink.

7. Wrap the chipboard pieces with the decorative paper and glue securely.

8. Cover both sides of the larger lid piece with paper and sponge the edges with black ink. Mark the center of the smaller lid piece and make a hole for the knob. Cover both sides of the smaller piece with paper and sponge the edges with black ink.

9. Attach the knob to the smaller lid piece. Glue the smaller lid to the larger lid, making sure to center it.

Monday, September 26, 2016

Hello there and happy fall! So far we're having gorgeous weather here in Southwestern Ontario after a hot and stick summer. In honour of this gorgeousness, I decided to create a canvas with some warm fall colours and one of my favourite little creatures!

I dry-embossed the chipboard leaves using a leaf-themed Darice embossing folder by lining them up as closely as possible with similar-sized leaves on the folder to get the lines in the right places. The pumpkins were covered with corrugated cardboard. The heart was dry-embossed.

I attached some bits of crumpled tissue paper and pieces of burlap and cheesecloth for texture as well as some mesh ribbon and corrugated cardboard. I added some stenciling with texture paste then primed everything with gesso before painting it with gold acrylic paint.

I then used Colourarte Silks and Twinkling H20s to add some splashes of warm colour here and there.

I finally figured out how I wanted to add texture to the cute little squirrel (after trying a couple techniques that provided somewhat less than stellar results....hey that happens to all of us right??) I combined texture paste with microbeads and spread it with my finger for a rough texture. When it was dry I painted it gold.

I then sprayed the canvas with a variety of mists and added some brown ink on the letters as well as on the edge of the squirrel. I attached a couple metal and wooden embellishments to finish it off. This little project will suit my house perfectly for fall decor, not only because I love squirrels, but because my home is definitely a bit of a nuthouse....and that's just the way I like it! Wishing you a happy and at least mildly nutty week!